Shortly after graduating from high school, Maurice left Memphis in 1960 at the age of nineteen and moved in permanently with his mother and stepfather in Chicago to begin a new life in Illinois. Chicago at that time was a de facto segregated city. African Americans lived in one area; Asians in another; and Italians, Jewish, and Polish residents occupied their own sections of town. People very rarely crossed from one neighborhood to another. For the first ten years the Adams family lived in a housing project. Then with the advent of the 1960s civil rights movement, activists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. targeted Chicago as one of the prime battlegrounds for their fair-housing campaigns. At the time, Dr. King worked with a young Chicago community activist named Jesse Jackson to help African Americans secure home loans in their neighborhoods. As a direct result of those efforts, Verdine Adams and his family moved to the South Shore area of Chicago. Because Dr. Adams (called Pops around the house) practiced medicine, his family was upper middle class or “bourgey” (short for bourgeois), as Verdine likes to describe them.
Once settled in the Windy City, Maurice proved to be an extremely talented drummer and was able to secure session work with Chess Records. Founded by Polish immigrants Leonard and Philip Chess in 1950, Chess was possibly the most respected record company in the city. Although other pop and R&B labels like Mercury and Brunswick were also headquartered in Chicago, Chess, along with its subsidiary imprints Cadet and Concept, as well as Chess Studios, was respected for its innovations, particularly in the fields of blues, rock and roll, jazz, and R&B. Chess enjoyed worldwide respect, especially among top British Invasion rock and roll groups like The Rolling Stones.
Maurice served as a session drummer for many prestigious Chess artists, including singers Etta James and Betty Everett and vocal group the Dells, plus blues legends Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy, and played on such timeless Chess jukebox classics as “Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass and Billy Stewart’s modern pop renditions of “My Guy” and “Summertime.” Maurice’s time at Chess also taught him music production and the ins and outs of the music business.
Verdine watched with awe at how well his brother progressed as a hired-gun studio musician. Maurice had that charisma, that confidence, that thing. To Verdine, Maurice was as slick, urbane, and worldly as a Miles Davis or Sam Cooke. In a comparatively short time, he had the world on a string, and there was no limit to what he could accomplish as a musician.
A Chess session that took place on Monday could be mastered, pressed, and ready to go out to radio and retail by Friday. Every week Maurice would bring home the next hot batch of new 45s and acetates, white-label copies marked “demonstration record only, not for sale.” Verdine would proudly play them on the family record player. What a thrill! As youngsters, Verdine and Freddie visited their sophisticated brother when he worked in the studio, which fueled their ambition to one day become professional musicians themselves. While Dr. Adams had hoped to see his namesake attend medical school, young Verdine was already gravitating toward a career in music.
In 1962 Maurice left the family home in South Shore to share a place with a young saxophonist named Don Myrick, whom he had met in the studio. He and Myrick joined a few other of their studio comrades to form a band called the Jazzmen, which included trombonist Louis Satterfield and pianist Jack DeJohnette, who would later make his mark as one of the jazz world’s premier drummers. The Jazzmen played a lot of gigs around town, and the Adamses would regularly go out to watch them perform in the clubs. Although Verdine and Freddie were too young to frequent nightclubs, Maurice shared photos of the gigs with his younger brothers. During that time the Jazzmen won a notable competition at a large Chicago musical gathering called the Harvest Moon Festival.
In 1966, at the age of twenty-five, Maurice hit the big time when he joined the Ramsey Lewis Trio. Lewis was a very popular jazz pianist on Chess’s Cadet label, and had scored his first major national crossover hit in 1965 with the timeless party anthem “The In Crowd.” Maurice replaced drummer Isaac “Redd” Holt, who had departed along with the trio’s bassist Eldee Young to form the soul-funk ensemble Young-Holt Unlimited, which went on to record “Soulful Strut,” a giant instrumental hit in 1968.
At fifteen, Verdine watched his older brother play live under the stars with the Lewis trio at the Ravinia Pavilion in Highland Park. Maurice was a heavy, powerful drummer, adding subtle theatrical elements to Ramsey’s live sets. At the end of a performance, each member might exit the stage individually, one after another during the final number.
Maurice would remain with the Ramsey Lewis Trio for three highly productive years. Ramsey was a great role model for young Reese. Lewis did things with a lot of class and style, and he taught Maurice the art of stage production and leadership and advised him to keep his standards high. Maurice toured the world and recorded nine LPs with the Lewis trio. One of those albums, Another Voyage (1969), included a two-minute piece called “Uhuru,” which featured Maurice performing on a small handheld instrument called the kalimba, or African thumb piano, which Reese found in a Chicago drum store.
During his tenure with Ramsey, Maurice lived the good life in a fancy Chicago penthouse. Verdine would often visit his brother’s pad on Maurice’s rare days off. The product of a new era, Maurice had become quite worldly and wise at a young age. Jazz success had given him the opportunity and confidence to spread his wings and conceptualize future musical ideas that he might want to pursue. Contemporary music was expanding its borders—especially in genres like jazz, progressive rock, and R&B. In addition to local musicians like Louis Satterfield and Don Myrick, Maurice worked with skilled studio arrangers like Tom (“Tom Tom 84”) Washington and the highly talented producer-arranger Charles Stepney. All of these contacts would prove highly valuable to Maurice in the future.
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During this time Verdine began seriously taking bass lessons after having messed around with the instrument for about a year. Maurice introduced his younger brother to a veteran Chicago bassist named Bill Terry, who played in a jazz style similar to that of the late Scott LaFaro of Bill Evans Trio fame. Maurice and Terry presented Verdine with an amazing gift that would forever change his life: his own acoustic bass! Just as when my old music teacher Mr. Richards did it for me, having an upright bass was a stone luxury for Verdine, who could now practice nonstop at home without the hassle of being a skinny kid schlepping the bulky instrument back and forth on the Chicago Transit Authority. As he worked toward mastering the instrument, Verdine took lessons with Maurice’s old studio pal Louis Satterfield. Maurice also arranged for Verdine to study with an acclaimed classical musician named Radi Lah, bassist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. With Lah’s classical tutelage and Satterfield’s slammin’ R&B and jazz approaches, Verdine became completely immersed in “the bottom line.” On Sundays Verdine would head over to Louis Satterfield’s house, where “Sat” would teach Verdine how to swing while reading studio charts.
Along with his jazz and classical studies, Verdine was deeply influenced by the pop and R&B hits he heard on the radio. It wasn’t long before he glided over to the electric bass, which proved to be an easy transition. The electric bass opened new doors for him, and like me, the teenager began to audition to play in bar bands. In the summer of 1967, at the age of sixteen, he took his funky red bass on the bus up to Chicago’s North Side to buy himself a shiny new Fender Telecaster bass. Because Verdine didn’t have enough money for a case, the music store salesman stuffed the Telecaster into a paper bag and sent him on his way. Verdine’s new axe made quite a statement. It was white and pristine—and nobody his age had one! Only the pros—like Satterfield himself—dared to play a flash white Telecaster. A year later Verdine bought an Ampeg B-15 amp—again, the same set-up Satterfield played on his record dates. In order to raise money for more lessons and make back the $160 he spent on the Ampeg, Verdine helped his dad during the summer, working as a hospital orderly. By his junior year in high school, he was
musically on fire. Thanks to Reese and his older brother’s influential friends, with access to great teachers and top professional gear, he was ready to roll.
Verdine and I were on a parallel trajectory. In order to spotlight his hot new gear, Verdine played at local high school talent shows, just as I had. On the weekends—also like me—he played Top 40 and R&B bar band gigs. When he became first-chair bassist in Illinois’s All-American High School Orchestra, he excitedly informed Satterfield, who was quick to put him back in his place.
“First chair?” was Louis’s lukewarm response. “That still means y’all are playing the same bass parts, ain’t it?”
Carmen Dragon, who conducted the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, came to Chicago as guest conductor of the All-American High School Orchestra. He arrived wearing an expensive camel hair coat and matching scarf, a fashion statement that impressed Verdine immeasurably. During rehearsals, the student players, including Verdine, were extremely nervous playing in front of the maestro. Dragon spoke fondly of his young son, Daryl, who at the time was playing in rock bands in California and cutting sessions in Los Angeles with The Beach Boys. Daryl went on to become the “Captain” of Captain & Tennille with his wife, Toni Tennille. Years later, when Verdine and Daryl met, he reminded Dragon that as a teenager, he had played in an orchestra that Daryl’s father had guest-conducted.
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In April 1970 Maurice White took a major gamble: He gave Ramsey Lewis notice that he was leaving the trio. It was a very risky—borderline insane!—move at the time, especially with the wide success Reese had enjoyed being Ramsey’s well-paid sideman. But throughout Maurice’s time with the Lewis trio, he had been carefully mapping out on paper and in his head a concept for a new kind of musical adventure. When Maurice explained to Ramsey that he was leaving to put together a larger, more experimental pop ensemble, Ramsey calmly told him to “take an aspirin and go back to bed.” But Reese didn’t go back to bed. He hung up his jazz shoes and with two studio keyboardists, Wade Flemons and Don Whitehead, formed a group that wrote songs and commercials in the Chicago area. Chess’s Cadet arranger Charles Stepney, impressed with Maurice’s new songs and catchy commercial spots, dubbed him with another unlikely nickname, “Rooney,” as in “Rooney Tunes,” a play on the cartoon series Looney Tunes. Soon Maurice’s trio scored a recording deal with Capitol Records and cut two singles under the name the Salty Peppers. One of their songs, “La La Time” became a midchart hit in the Midwest, while their second single, “Uh Huh Yeah,” completely stalled, causing them to lose their label deal as quickly as they’d scored it.
Undaunted, Maurice had a much bigger concept in mind. He planned to expand his group to eight pieces, change its name, and rather than keep headquarters in Chicago, he would relocate to Los Angeles! Reese’s concept called for the formation of a unique and limitless-potential band that could cross over numerous genres of music, much like what we were experimenting with in Denver with my group, Friends & Love.
While Verdine feared that his brother was treading on dangerous professional ground, Edna and Verdine Sr. were upset that their son would leave such a cushy gig with Ramsey. They dug Ramsey; he was successful, and Reese was doing great just playing drums in the trio. To start a new band—with eight pieces!—and leave Ramsey, who was a big name with not one but two pop hit records (the second was “Wade in the Water”) was unfathomable!
Yet Maurice saw things differently. He realized that Lewis’s credibility had taken a serious hit with the hip New York jazz players because of his crossover success. And as popular and well respected as Chess Records was during that time, it was limited in its ability to sell records and break and develop acts, compared to the larger East Coast–based labels like Columbia, Decca, and RCA or West Coast labels like Capitol and Warner Brothers. Chicago would always take a backseat in the music business. When Verdine went to a free summer concert in Chicago’s Grant Park with the late, great rock and soul singer Baby Huey, he was amazed to realize how Huey had failed to become a big star outside the Midwest. Meanwhile, another act on the same bill, Sly Stone, recording for CBS-owned Epic Records, would soon explode into an across-the-board crossover star. Who knew?
As Maurice prepared to leave for the West Coast, the unthinkable happened: He called Verdine and invited him to come to California with him! At the time, Verdine had safe and firm plans to stay where he was and—like me, in Colorado—to enjoy being a big fish in a smaller pond. He was also on track to study classical music in Chicago. He had already been awarded a full-ride, four-year scholarship to attend music conservatory, along with an inside track to becoming a premier session player in the Windy City. With Maurice heading west, Verdine had had stars in his eyes to become the next Lou Satterfield.
When Verdine announced to his mother and father at the family dinner table that he was going to California with Maurice, they laughed as if he were telling the joke of the evening. Looking back, even Verdine didn’t realize the magnitude of his decision. Moving to California with Reese was a monumental step, and as scary for him as my blindly leaving Denver for LA would be for me. By splitting Chicago, Verdine was turning his back on some potentially lucrative opportunities.
Reese’s and now Verdine’s announcements rocked the Adams household to its core. Up until then nobody had left the family nest, much less young Verdine, the gawky, skinny, nineteen-year-old with buck teeth and pimples, weighing in at “a buck-o-five.” In the end Pops Adams, the family patriarch, gave the boys his heartfelt blessing, and by 1970 the brothers were on their way to greener Southern California pastures to navigate the uncharted musical horizons of Hollywood. Upon leaving the family in Chicago, Verdine (and later Freddie) made the symbolic gesture of familial solidarity toward his older brother by adopting the White surname. Maurice and Verdine White were on the road to make their bones in sunny Southern California.
8
CITY SLICKER, COUNTRY BOY, AND A YELLOW KAZOO
Maurice had formed Earth, Wind & Fire in Chicago in 1969, with Verdine on bass and Wade Flemons and Don Whitehead, the two keyboardists from the Salty Peppers. He added singer Sherry Scott and a Chicago percussionist who called himself Yackov Ben Israel. Yackov Ben Israel’s real name was Phillard Williams, but the band nicknamed him “Fee Fee.” He was one of the first dudes the Whites had met who wore an earring—a Star of David.
The auditions continued in Los Angeles, where Maurice and Verdine hired a guitarist from Southern California named Michael Beal and added a horn section with Chester Washington on woodwinds, trumpet player Leslie Drayton, and trombonist Alex Thomas. True to Reese’s expanded dreams and schemes, the band had swelled to a ten-piece group! With so large a lineup, the group was quite raw in terms of defining its roots and its musical direction. Would it borrow from jazz, soul, R&B, rock, blues, or all of the above? Maurice dubbed the band “Earth, Wind & Fire,” based on his astrological sign, Sagittarius, which had elements of fire and the “seasonal qualities” of earth and air (i.e., wind)—whatever that meant!
Upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1970, Maurice scored a major coup for his fledgling band. After being introduced by a mutual friend to Jim Brown, Brown had agreed to become Earth, Wind & Fire’s first manager. Jim was one cool customer and had set up an organization in Los Angeles called BBC, short for Brown, Bloch and Coby, featuring Brown along with talent rep Paul Bloch and entertainment lawyer Richard Coby. BBC managed the slick R&B pop group Friends of Distinction, which recorded for RCA. BBC had also intervened on behalf of heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali after Ali had refused conscription into the army in 1967. The sports powers-that-be had called on Brown and the BBC organization to meet with Ali. Brown enlisted an envoy of African American dignitaries to try to help resolve the deadlocked problem. Afterward Ali fought his draft-evasion charges and government prosecution all the way through the appeals process.
During the explosive late 1960s, the American people had become bitterly divide
d over the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. Many publicly challenged Ali’s personal integrity and accused him of being a draft dodger. Four years later, after being stripped of his boxing titles and licenses, Ali was exonerated by the Supreme Court. Resuming his boxing career, Ali later went on to become the World Heavyweight Champion three times in a row.
In June 1970 the Whites were invited to attend a Hollywood party at Jim Brown’s house. Reese scowled when Verdine put on his finest suit, one he had worn in high school the year before. It was decidedly unhip, so Maurice took his gangly younger brother down to a Hollywood Boulevard boutique and bought him some bell-bottom pants, a pair of sandals, and a big floppy hippie vest. As the pair approached Jim Brown’s house on Sunset Plaza Drive, Verdine was jet-lagged from his Chicago flight.
Brown opened the door and greeted the musicians. He said, “Welcome to the family, young man,” to Verdine, who felt both intimidated and impressed to be in the company of the football legend.
It was as if the brothers had stepped onto the TV set of Chicago’s Playboy After Dark! Reese and Verdine surveyed the room, which was filled with famous celebrities, including movie star Richard Roundtree of Shaft and the Temptations’ lead vocalist Eddie Kendricks. Verdine immediately knew that he had made the right decision to move to Los Angeles, and that this was the beginning of an unbelievable musical journey.
Maurice and Verdine took up temporary digs at the famous Landmark Motor Hotel at 7047 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. Rock musicians like Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Alice Cooper regularly stayed there, and five months later, in October 1970, Joplin would die from an accidental overdose of heroin in room 105.
Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire Page 6